The memory of one particular summer evening is still burned in my brain as if it were yesterday. There was nothing but wide-open fields for miles and miles around our rural Minnesota home. We never saw strangers not ever and here on this hot evening was a real live one walking up our driveway.

A young man, a slightly-built hitchhiker (搭便车的人) approached our door. He knew there was a storm coming, and he desperately needed shelter. Not wanting to intrude on our home and family, he asked my dad if he could sleep in our basement for the night for protection from the rain. Instead of saying yes, my dad loaded us all up in the 1959 Chevrolet: five kids, my mum, and the man.

Our family consisted of three older children whose father had died young and three more children from the union of my mother and father. Our older brother Jerry was in the Navy, on a ship somewhere overseas. Our mum and dad worried about him.

We drove him 10 miles to the next town, where Dad bought the man a room for the night along with a hot evening meal. In the car after we dropped off the stranger, I heard my dad say to my mum, "I just hope that if Jerry ever needs anything, this kindness will be returned to him."

Weeks later, Dad told my uncle about the young man. My uncle suggested that perhaps my dad shouldn't have taken the risk of having a stranger in our car. My dad replied, "You are absolutely right. I should have invited him into our home."